The author purports to analyse the textual appearance of law and its invasion of our everyday life through the spectrum of semiotics, semantics and philosophy. Goyard-Fabre argues that legal writing or text production, in the end, does not differ fundamentally from other productions of the human mind. Or, in other words, that its distinctiveness from e.g. philosophical writing is highly questionable.

23 August 2013

What: 67th Session of the Societé international Fernand de Visscher pour l'Histoire des Droits de l'Antiquité: "Roman Law as Basis of Modern Law"

Where: University of Salzburg

When: 10-15 September 2013

Fees: The
fees include all lunches, dinners, a concert and the last evening’s banquet for
the participants as well as for the companions.

The total
sum will be of 300 Euros (350 Euros with the excursion on Saturday),- if you
pay until July, 15th. If you pay later than this or you wish to pay
cash at the conference the fees will be 350 Euros (400 Euros with the excursion
on Saturday).

The call for application to participate to the Session is still open. If you wish to give a paper, please send an abstract of 200-500 words.

In
Laurence Sterne’s 1759 comic novel, Tristram Shandy, we encounter a startling
invocation of protected individual rights, the individual in this case being
the hapless proto-human Homunculus destined to become the titular character.
Decades before the revolutionary declarations of rights, Sterne, Thomas
Jefferson’s favourite author in matters of moral philosophy, blatantly
ridicules the idea of the self-evidence of rights. Sterne’s satirical
“rights-talk” captures two important facets: the atomistic, alienating aspect
of perceiving human relations through the lens of rights, as famously
criticized by Marx and so many others ever since; and the way in which drawing
on genuinely legal concepts has contributed to the development of this often
criticized language of isolation. In this paper, I trace, in particular, the
ideas of Natural law scholars like Grotius and Pufendorf (who is explicitly
referred to by Sterne) who conceptualized rights as non-relational, as domains,
modelled on the Roman law concepts of dominium, ownership, and patria, the
power of a pater familias over his household, both concepts that are
characterized by domination over objects or human beings. Yet a theory of
rights that insists on the integrity of exclusive spheres of power cannot
easily accommodate non-transgressive intersubjective action – most importantly,
contract. Nonetheless, the rhetoric of the protected sphere of the subjective
right never left the language of law.

22 August 2013

Development of Russian Law-VI:Between Tradition and ModernityInternational ConferenceOctober 17-18, 2013Faculty of LawUniversity of HelsinkiCall for papers

In the past year, Russian law has faced a number of challenges testing its cohesiveness and the level of development, together with the rule of law and democracy. The State Duma election fraud, the Pussy Riot case, the Magnitsky case, anti-gay laws, anti-opposition measures and, finally, the “anti-Magnitsky law” underlined the use of law for the goals of an authoritarian political regime, resembling methods and attitudes of Soviet positive law-making. Many of the 2011-2012 laws have been passed in an attempt to regulate private behavior and to test the limits of personal liberty, as individuals understand it.

In the present situation, legal research faces many challenges of its own. After the 1990s, the age of experiments, swift denials and democratic debates, Russian legal science together with other social sciences and humanities entered a period of stabilization and a quiet state of rigid conservatism even worse than in the thriving age of Soviet ideological control, because today Russia is officially viewed as a “democratic state” and there is no need to struggle with the regime and hide your ideas behind the crafted narrative of supposedly official discourse. Any scholar is relatively free to define his or her research interests, methodology and the area of study, as well as to express their bright and challenging ideas through access to a wide range of academic journals. However, the focus of lawyers today is mostly on the normative substance of Russian rules and institutions – real law and legal reasoning – and less on the socio-economic dimension. Legal research tends to concentrate on purely legal issues and withdraw from the uncertainties of other social sciences through careful avoidance of interdisciplinarity. I. Iu. Kozlikhin expressed his disagreement with “pointless and even detrimental usage of ‘alien’ terminology” in one of his recent articles, while criticizing hermeneutics, legal anthropology and communicative theory in their application to law and legal theory.

"The Second World War saw the rise not only of new technologies, new freedoms, new terrors, and a new world order, but of new legal issues. Coming too soon after the First World War, dragging along with it a number of laws that did and did not work well, this new conflict also generated a whole new set of legal issues that were addressed by a new generation of laws, cases, and legal personalities. More well-known for the heroics and perseverance of the "Greatest Generation," the story of the legal side of the war is now told in a new book. This book takes a global perspective in looking at the legal situations in seven major countries affected by the war.

Fifty-two (52) legal
issues are identified from the war, ranging from subverting the judiciary and
creating a divine military to economic and social issues to genocide and
nuclear weapons. For every legal issue identified, the laws passed and the
cases tried to address these legal issues are discussed. And the legal
personalities behind the issues, laws, and cases are presented. More than 300
lawyers and judges, from more than 20 countries around the world, are brought
to life. Some were famous as national or global leaders while others were
relatively obscure and faded quickly into the background of history. These
people, of many nationalities, races, genders, and roles, present a fascinating
human backdrop to understanding the legal story of the war.

In addition
to presenting the story behind legal issues in the major countries in WWII, the
book continues its practical approach by linking many of these issues to modern
application. Up to half of the issues presented still resonate today in
resolving the legal issues around current conflicts. So whether you want to
read this book to gain a global perspective to WWII legal issues, gain a
comprehensive understanding of the legal issues involved in such a widespread
war, to be entertained by the cases and stories of the lawyers and judges
involved, find out about little known issues, cases, or personalities, or
discover the background for modern issues related to war, this book has
something for everyone, lawyer, history buff, or general reader".

16 August 2013

Why are civil authorities in so-called liberal democracies affronted by public nudity and the Islamic full-face ‘veil’? Why are law and civil order so closely associated with robes, gowns, suits, wigs and uniforms? Why is law so concerned with the ‘evident’ and the need for justice to be ‘seen’ to be done? Why do we dress and obey dress codes at all? In this, the first ever study devoted to the many deep cultural connections between dress and law, the author addresses these questions and more. His responses flow from the radical thesis that ‘law is dress and dress is law’. Engaging with sources from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Shakespeare, Carlyle, Dickens and Damien Hirst, Professor Watt draws a revealing history of dress and civil order and offers challenging conclusions about the nature of truth and the potential for individuals to fit within the forms of civil life.

Advance review: “In a finely fluent and eruditely entertaining fashion, Dress, Law and Naked Truth provides a radical revival of the philosophy of clothes for common lawyers. Watt's sartorial jurisprudence draws upon the rich history and homology of costume and custom, livery and law, body art and habeas corpus, to show that the social contract could never be nudum pactum because habit is of the essence of law.” – Professor Peter Goodrich, Professor of Law and Director of Law and Humanities, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, New York.

Professor Watt will deliver a lunch-time lecture based on the book at Duke Law School on Thursday, September 12, 2013 12:15pm (Law School 3043).

14 August 2013

The International Graduate School for Legal Historical Research is coordinated by members of the following institutes: Instituto de Investigaciones de Historia del Derecho in Argentina, Instituto Brasileiro de História do Direitoin in Brasil and Max-Planck-Institut für europäische Rechtsgeschichte in Germany.

The International Graduate School brings together outstanding young researches in the field of legal history in yearly workshops which rotate between Argentina, Brasil and Germany. It offers the possibility to present one’s own research project to a circle of renowned researchers and experts.

Third convention of the International Graduate School for Legal Historical Research

Eligible to apply are young researchers (PhD students) that are working on a legal historical subject.

Applications must be submitted by September 8th, 2013 using the application form together with an abstract of the research subject (approx. 600 words) and a CV. Please send your documents via electronic mail to Mrs. Nicole Pasakarnis.

A committee composed of the members of the three institutions will select a limited number of participants from the applications. All applicants will be informed by the beginning of October 2013. The selected researchers will have to submit their complete paper (written either in English, Portuguese, or Spanish) by December 31st, 2013. The papers will then be circulated among the participants.

The International Graduate School will provide hotel accommodation and cover the travel expenses of up to EURO 1,000 for trans-continental flights and up to EURO 400 within Europe.

The Editions Panthéon-Assas published a collective work resulting from a colloquium on the theme "Revenge or forgiveness ?", discussing the relationship between the State and the repression of socially inappropriate behaviour. Legal historians as well as specialists of positive domestic and international law address this basic question, which has relevance for comparative legal historians as well.

The work counts 317 pages and about 15 contributions, including those of renowned scholars as Mireille Delmas-Marty, Jean Pradel or Pierre Mazeaud.

The current issue of "Humanity" contains a number of articles devoted to the topic of the development of human rights during the 20th century. Following this LINK it is possible to read the abstracts and also, after subscribing, to read the entire articles online.

The abstract reads:During the last decades, we have learned from authors like Helmut Coing, Franz Wieacker, Harold Berman, Peter Stein, Manlio Bellomo, Paolo Prodi, – to name but a few – that one of Europe’s major cultural achievements is its law, its unique legal culture. Europe, as is emphasized today not least in intercultural dialogue, or ‘the West’ have produced a wide range of cultural achievements that spread around the world: the rule of law, human rights, the differentiation between the realms of law and religion, codification techniques, etc. Yet, this historical self-reassurance has come under considerable pressure, not least through Global history, Postcolonial Studies, and Critical Legal Studies. Traditional European history is said to be Eurocentric, partial, incomplete and inadequate to the complexity of historical globalization. Even if we might not agree with this criticism: The discipline of ‚European Legal History’ has to consider these challenges. In the light of this criticism, we have to deliberate on fundamental questions about how we want to write European Legal History in the future.

In this working paper, I would like address basically three questions: Which conception of Europe does ‘European Legal History’ hold; is it still valid for us today – and (how) can this tradition be combined with global perspectives on history? – Ultimately, I argue that we are moving from a ‘European legal history’ to a ‘Legal history (of Europe) in a global perspective’ and indicate what the latter could look like.

06 August 2013

"This book fills a major gap in the ever-increasing secondary literature on Hannah Arendt's political thought by providing a dedicated and coherent treatment of the many, various and interesting things which Arendt had to say about law. Often obscured by more pressing or more controversial aspects of her work, Arendt nonetheless had interesting insights into Greek and Roman concepts of law, human rights, constitutional design, legislation, sovereignty, international tribunals, judicial review and much more. This book retrieves these aspects of her legal philosophy for the attention of both Arendt scholars and lawyers alike. The book brings together lawyers as well as Arendt scholars drawn from a range of disciplines (philosophy, political science, international relations), who have engaged in an internal debate the dynamism of which is captured in print. Following the editors' introduction, the book is split into four Parts: Part I explores the concept of law in Arendt's thought; Part II explores legal aspects of Arendt's constitutional thought: first locating Arendt in the wider tradition of republican constitutionalism, before turning attention to the role of courts and the role of parliament in her constitutional design. In Part III Arendt's thought on international law is explored from a variety of perspectives, covering international institutions and international criminal law, as well as the theoretical foundations of international law. Part IV debates the foundations, content and meaning of Arendt's famous and influential claim that the 'right to have rights' is the one true human right".

European harmonisation efforts such as a European civil code, European constitutional treaties, European principles, and European fundamental rights are frequently criticised for building on or creating a European legal culture that does not exist; in reality what we have is European legal pluralism. Some have argued that the pluralistic structure of European law hinders the development of a community, which is a necessary requirement for a European legal culture. And if there can be no common European legal culture then there is no basis for harmonising exercises.

The contributors to this book explore in different legal areas whether in fact the contrary is true. Cultural pluralism might indeed be a distinctive feature of European legal culture. Diversity is not something that is in opposition to, but rather constitutes a new, different understanding of European legal culture. The contributions demonstrate in detail how such an approach inter alia in the areas of private, corporate, administrative and constitutional law furthers understanding of a developing European legal culture, how it offers theoretical and doctrinal insights, and how it adds critical perspective.

"Vernon Bogdanor once told the Guardian that he made 'a living of something that doesn't exist'. He also quipped that the British Constitution can be summed up in eight words: 'Whatever the Queen in Parliament decides is law.' That may still be the case, yet in many ways the once elusive British Constitution has now become much more grounded, much more tangible and much more based on written sources than was previously the case. It now exists in a way in which it previously did not.

However, though the changes may seem revolutionary, much of the underlying structure remains unchanged; there are limits to the changes. Where does all this leave the Constitution? Here constitutional experts, political scientists and legal practitioners present up-to-date and in-depth commentaries on their respective areas of expertise. While also a Festschrift in honour of Vernon Bogdanor, this book is above all a comprehensive compendium on the present state of the British Constitution". More information HERE.

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Original articles in basic and applied research. Case studies. Critical reviews, surveys, opinions, commentaries and essaysWe invite you to submit your manuscript(s) to ijerd@academeresearchjournals.org, for publication. Our objective is to inform authors of the decision on their manuscript(s) within four weeks of submission. Following acceptance, a paper will normally be published in the next issue. Instruction for authors and other details are available on our website;

IJERD is an Open Access Journal. One key request of researchers across the world is unrestricted access to research publications. Open access gives a worldwide audience larger than that of any subscription-based journal and thus increases the visibility and impact of published works. It also enhances indexing, retrieval power and eliminates the need for permissions to reproduce and distribute content. IJERD is fully committed to the Open Access Initiative and will provide free access to all articles as soon as they are published".